The Gun Carriage

(By Gub, London)

Police on motor-cycle mounts
Semaphore with shrill acoustic whistles.
The Aldwych’s Saturday bustle freezes,
As the London’s tourist infantry step back,
Survey Fleet Street’s empty horizon, agog.
A flat autumn city silence.
Empty trees.
A parchment road – folded in residue of orange and green
Littered leaves.
No turning back.
A slow rumbling thunder
Hooves on tarmac, growing harder.
Cupping the tapestried street
Like a thousand arrhythmic shells.
Then the coarse jangle of harness, of bridles,
Leathered cases. Men on the move.
Bright in scarlet and plumes, huge white equestrian
Beasts – a pageant synthesis in sound, smacking the ground – thud, whack and judder.
Magnificent – behind the ranks of pinioned capes, the flooding flow of crimson colour, the gun carriage wheels crack, wood on steel.
Towards the Strand this glorious phalanx of man, beast and monstrous machine rumbles – on their faces, the grim determined jaws of purpose, driving forth with fixed intent.
Tomorrow the salute.
At 11 – the same hour, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
Remembrance.
How could history ever deceive, or dupe memory – with such an unforgettable passing?

Universe and Chips

(By Gub)

Life passes through us 

driven by some cryptic calling, 

searching for worthier vessels, 

less fragile containers, 

that are more robust. 

Magnetized by deep faith and an insatiable need to trust, 

the infinite force can't rely on humans

to fulfill it's destiny - 

better leave it to more able beings in some corner of

the universe - 

creatures that don't rely on sex, crosswords, politics or

curiosity about their origins -

blind, dumb, sequins 

stars with indefinite

radiation 

I bet that's where God is stashing his chips.

Now

(By Gub)

Now you are now

The second run

The bullet spent

The blasted gun

The air breathed

The moment spun

You are now

Until Now

Is done.

November 11

(By Gub)

I have passed the middle of my life

bathed in light,

midway between the rising

and setting suns.

Your body, my clock, each hour 'glass'

Shins

(By Gub)

Articulate
We bend least
Where we need a joint
The sensitive shin
Being a case in point
But mastery of the universe
Man cannot reappoint
The 'shins of the father'
Neither reanoint!

Shinbone

(HBC)

I palmed the torch
Cocked my head up to the stars
Sheep moved
Shuffling avalanche
Across a field
A black dog
Dissolved and reformed
As twinset bouncing dots of light
The universe hung over me
Detached
An oversized bell-jar
Inside,
The acute impact with life
A kick in the shinbone
As I was learning to play

Rituals and Road-kill

(HBC)

Mornings stretch at the threshold
With slug-like stoicism
My vertebrae cling
To the memory of sleep
The ritual of waking
Cannot be observed backwards.
From dreams, to open eyes
To unfurled limbs
To layers, to crumbs -
The arresting picture of
A child in ill-fitting armour
Quickly emerges,
Idly put together
Like a six-piece jigsaw puzzle.
We ride towards the sun
A squashed toad stretches
Next to a squashed newt
As if a child had abandoned
Am impromptu dissection
In the middle of the road
Living beasts
Zoom across the road
I believe in the tail-flashing rabbits,
But the moss-skinned deer
Seem ghostly,
Unreliable apparitions.
Nature has painted
The spectacle of the dead
And the near-dead in
Vivid greens and reds
Colour-blind,
Death gently exhales
Under the car tyres